761–770 of 912 posts
This has much broader implications for the US economy and rule of law in the US. If government procurement rules intended for national security risks can be abused as a way to punish Anthropic for perceived lack of loyalty, why not any other company that displeases the administration like Apple or Amazon? This marks an important turning point for the US.
I've gathered that the dispute is over Anthropic's two red lines: mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Is there any information (or rumors even) about what the specific request was? I can't believe the government would be escalating this hard over "we might want to do autonomous weapons in the vague, distant future" without a concrete, immediate request that Anthropic was denying. Even if there was a desir…
>In 2025, reportedly Anthropic became the first AI company cleared for use in relation to classified operations and to handle classified information. This current controversy, however, began in January 2026 when, through a partnership with defense contractor Palantir, Anthropic came to suspect their AI had been used during the January 3 attack on Venezuela. In January 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote to reiterate that surveillance against US persons and autonomous weapons systems were two “bright red lines” not to be crossed, or at least topics that needed to be handled with “extreme care and scrutiny combined with guardrails to prevent abuses.” You can also read Anthropic’s self-proclaimed core views on AI safety here, as well as their LLM, Claude’s, constitution here.
This has much broader implications for the US economy and rule of law in the US. If government procurement rules intended for national security risks can be abused as a way to punish Anthropic for perceived lack of loyalty, why not any other company that displeases the administration like Apple or Amazon? This marks an important turning point for the US.
Take the stated tool for this action, the Defense Production Act ("DPA") [1]. It was passed in 1950. What does it cover? Well, lots of things. The DPA has been invoked many times over 76 years.
Notably in 1980 it was expanded to include "energy", I guess in response to the 1970s OPEC Oil Crisis.
Remember during he pandemic when gas prices skyrocketed? As an aside, that was Trump's fault. But given that "energy" is a "material good" under the DPA, the government could've invoked it to tackle high energy prices and didn't.
So, the government is willing to invoke the DPA to protect corporate and wealthy interests, which now includes military applications of AI for imperialist purposes, but never for you, the average citizen. IT's weird how that keeps consistently happening.
The US government has consistently acted to further the interests of US corporations and the ultra-wealthy. You probably just haven't been paying attention until now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
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It’s a descriptive statement about the law. But you’re mischaracterizing the normative principle underlying the law. It’s not based on power, but rather the moral duties incumbent on citizens.
>but rather the moral duties incumbent on citizens. Is it a "moral duty" to aid your government, especially in the current social/political environment? Conscription is theoretically still allowed in the US, and you're theoretically supposed to register for the SSS, but nobody has been prosecuted for failure to do so in decades. That suggests the "moral duty" aspect has significantly weakened. Moreover if we're makin…
Whether they participate voluntarily in a commercial transaction or participate only when compelled to by law (setting aside the question of whether the government does or should have that power) is certainly their call to make.
Just as any individual can decide whether to volunteer, whether to wait until drafted, or whether to refuse to be drafted and face the consequences.
(History shows these decisions, and the rights to make them, are meaningful at scale!)
Finally, governments who expect their leading scientists to do groundbreaking work simply out of fear of imprisonment are NGMI against governments whose scientists believe in their cause.
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There's a hell of a difference between "we don't like your terms so we're going to use a different supplier" and "we don't like your terms, so we're going to use the power of the federal government to compel you to change them". The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, but Anthropic is not part of the military! Outside serving the public interest in a crisis, the president has no right to compel Anthr…
I'd encourage you to look up the Defense Production Act. Its powers are probably broad enough that the President could unilaterally force Anthropic to do this whether or not it wants to. It's the same logic that would allow him to force an auto manufacturer to produce tanks. And the law doesn't care whether we are in a crisis or not. It's enough that he determine (on his own) that this action is "necessary or appropr…
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The turning point happened when Trump was reelected. One could argue the turning point happened Jan. 6 2020 and nobody truly cared. The consequence should have been for all insurrectionists and Trump himself to be tried for treason and be imprisoned indefinitely. Yet here we are.
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I think this is different. It’s a statement that this product is not qualified to perform that function(autonomous killing decisions). I think it is pure madness to think AI is currently up to this task. I also think it should be a war crime. I think congress should pass a law forbidding it.
There seem to be two separate lines of thought in this conversation: first, that the AI tech isn't smart enough for us to trust it with autonomously killing people. Second, even if it was smart enough , maybe such weapons are immoral to produce? The first line of thought is probably true, but could change in the next 5 years-- so maybe we should be preparing for that? The second line of thought is something for democ…
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I would feel much better about other countries mass surveillance than the US. China for instance can’t do nearly as much to me as the US justice system can.
Ok so now connect the mass surveillance system to an automated killing system that can blow you up in the grocery store because you're standing in line next to its target.
> We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight. Hope is neat, but are the signatories willing to quit their jobs over this? Kind of a hollow threat if not.
Prisoner's Dilemma in Action!